


fish out of water

by amphibianChaos



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21810898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amphibianChaos/pseuds/amphibianChaos
Summary: You have no idea how this happened. Yes, it's possible for a mer to become a human, every dumbass wriggler knows that, but it requires some kind of perfectly timed elaborate ritual involving rare magic stuff and/or psychic powers, neither of which you have or give a shit about. There is no possible way that you could have transformed. Yet somehow, you did.Karkat Vantas, merperson, mysteriously becomes human and searches for answers along with Dave Strider, despite the fact that neither of them have any idea what they're doing.
Relationships: Dave Strider & Karkat Vantas
Kudos: 19





	1. where do i go from here

**Author's Note:**

> mermaid au! I'm really excited about this story and I hope you guys like it :D  
> i feel like i should have more to say about this but i don't  
> anyway  
> mermaids  
> cool  
> yeah

You are so fucked.

You're trying not to have a panic attack right now, but it's kind of hard when the thing you've been dreading your entire life has started to happen. Like the world just decided to go, _hey, Karkat Vantas already has the shittiest life in existence, why not randomly speed up his imminent demise an entire gogdamn sweep early?_ Because fuck you. You are going to fucking die.

Your scales are growing in red.

Within a week or so, your tail will be completely bright fuckass red, basically a neon sign saying _MUTANT_ in all caps, an open invitation for anyone to cull you immediately and without mercy. Gone is your gray-tailed wriggler anonymity, when you just had to worry about keeping to yourself and hiding your injuries and your grubscars so no one could see your blood. Now you're not sure how much longer you'll have the luxury of existing.

And it's not even supposed to be happening yet. Your scales are supposed to change to your blood color around nine sweeps, everyone knows that, but you're barely eight. You're not surprised that your mutant blood is fucking everything up, but still. You just wish you had more time.

You look down at your tail and the offending red scales growing into a sea of gray. You take the nearest one between your fingers and rip it from your skin. It hurts, and a few drops of blood float out, but you grab the next closest one and tear it out too, ignoring the pain and the blood and everything except _making your tail not be red_. It can't be red. It can't.

After several minutes of literally tearing yourself apart, you look over your tail. It's all gray now, with holes from your red scales, some more obvious than others. It's not going to last, the red will grow back, but you don't exactly have a better plan right now. All you can do right now is try to survive.

Your vision spins suddenly and you pass out.

The lunar eclipse is about to start.

You have your camera set up and ready to go, perfectly angled so you have that hella scenic view with the moon and stars over the ocean and all that. You double check to make sure all the camera settings are in order. You tested it out by taking a few pictures of the stars last night and they turned out pretty good. You've always wanted to take cool space pictures like this, but you were never able to get a decent photo with all the light pollution and shit in Houston—

Nope. You back that train of thought right up into the not-the-fuck-now station, because you are not thinking about that tonight, or preferably ever. You consider taking an ironically shitty picture of the moon just for kicks. Maybe photoshop it into an even shittier UFO and send it to Egbert. Like, _hey John, check it out, aliens are real. We've got some solid evidence right here, a low-res jpeg that looks sort of like the first search result for "ufo clipart" crossed with a blurry picture of a Ping-Pong ball. Better call Obama because shit just got all Area 51 up in here._

Whatever. Eclipse. Cool stuff. Which would look even cooler next to that sick rock formation over there. You start walking over to scope out the view and notice what you think looks kind of like a person lying near the rocks. Possibly some kind of drunk guy, or maybe just some garbage that looks kind of person-shaped in the shadows. You walk closer to see and _hopy shit_.

The person has a gogdamn _tail_.

Their top half is human, at least as far as you can tell (they're mostly covered by an oversized t-shirt, which now that you think about it might actually be the same shirt you lost at this beach about a month ago, but that's not exactly the most important thing on your mind right now). Their bottom half is a dark gray fish tail that shimmers in the moonlight. You lean down toward them. Their eyes are closed and they aren't moving.

"Hey, uh, mermaid dude." You nudge their shoulder but they don't respond. They do seem to be breathing though, which is good. "You okay? Shit, you're probably not. Should I put you back in the ocean or some shit? Fuck, is this like some weird reverse Little Mermaid thing, do I have to no-homo true love's kiss my new fish friend or something, like what else do you do when a gogdamn mythical creature basically shows up in your backyard and—"

Your rambling is cut short when you realize there's a light emanating from around the person's tail, growing brighter until you have to look away because even with your shades you're gonna go fucking blind if you keep staring straight at it. You're not even looking at it anymore and it's so gogdamn bright it's like some kind of beacon, like damn, they can probably see that shit from outer space—

The light flashes and then disappears, and you turn back to the mermaid-person. Who is apparently no longer a mermaid, considering their tail seems to have been magically replaced with legs. Their eyes flutter open and glance over toward you, half-focused. "What...?"

"Are you okay?" They mutter something incoherent and try to stand up but end up falling down like a baby deer or something. "Come on." You reach out your hand and they lean on you, and you start walking them toward your house. With every step it feels like they're leaning more of their weight on you and you think they're passing out again.

You half-carry them the last few steps to the house. Dirk is nowhere to be found, which is good you guess, you're not really in the mood for explaining whatever's happening even if you could explain it. You carry fish friend into your room and lay them down in the pile of blankets and semi-ironic stuffed animals (courtesy of Roxy) next to your bed. _Okay. Fuck. We're just going to close our eyes for a second and then we're gonna figure this shit out. Cool._

You swear you only close your eyes for a few seconds but you're already asleep.

When you wake up, there's a few minutes where you wonder _what the fuck happened_.

And then you see your new fish comrade across the room and remember, oh yeah, _that_ happened.

You're not really sure what to do, so you decide to just go out of your room and get some food or something like a totally chill and normal person. Merdude is sound asleep in the blanket pile, cuddling a stuffed crab that you forgot existed. You slip out of your room on a quest for some Doritos.

Dirk is in the hallway, holding your tripod and camera setup. Shit. You forgot all about that. "You left this outside. Didn't really think you would ditch the whole lunar eclipse thing."

You shrug and try to look nonchalant. "Got distracted, found a cool fish thing." It's technically not a lie.

He raises an eyebrow. "And this fish was more important than the rare astronomical event you've been talking about for weeks?"

Now that he's bringing it up, you are kinda bummed that you missed the eclipse. But whatever. Nothing you can do about it now. You grab your Doritos and go back to your room, where the merperson seems to be waking up.

And that's when everything promptly goes to shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how many different words can you make for "mermaid", brought to you by dave strider  
> this is going to be an interesting friendship to say the least


	2. and nobody, nobody knows

You wake up slowly. The sun is shining through the water and the world is warm and soft around you. It's peaceful, but unfamiliar, and the unfamiliarity is what brings you to wake up, to open your eyes.

That's when the panic hits.

You are not in the ocean.

You are not in your hive.

You have legs.

Somehow, you've become human.

How did you become human.

Hopy fuck.

You look around, hands shaking. You're in a hive—a human hive, but you don't see any humans around, which is probably for the best. Your legs are tangled in a mess of soft things—fuck, _legs_.

You have no idea how this happened. Yes, it's possible for a mer to become a human, every dumbass wriggler knows that, but it requires some kind of perfectly timed elaborate ritual involving rare magic stuff and/or psychic powers, neither of which you have or give a shit about. There is no possible way that you could have transformed. Yet somehow, you did.

You need to get out of here. You can't be here. Obviously a human found you, and you don't know what they're going to do with you, but it's probably not anything good. You want to go back to your hive, except oh wait, you can't, _your tail is turning your blood color and you're going to get fucking culled_.

So this is it. You're dead either way. Fuck.

And as if the panic attack you're having isn't bad enough already, the fucking human shows up out of nowhere.

"You okay, dude? Shit, are you a dude? I'm trying not to assume anyone's gender up in here, Roxy would probably kill me for that, fuck, do mermaids even have genders? Or do you like, classify society by the cilantro soap gene or something? Fuck, that would be epic, everyone thinks the ocean's just full of fish and that kind of boring shit but no we've got a whole fucking underwater cilantro-based hierarchy of mer-people."

Wow. You just kind of sit there in stunned silence for a minute as the human rambles on about whatever the fuck cilantro is. You thought after two sweeps of having Gamzee fucking Makara as your moirail that you had built up an immunity to unbelievably inane conversations, but this guy is taking it to a whole new level of bullshit. "Yes, mers have fucking genders, yes I am a guy, now shut your disgusting human mouth and just _stop talking_."

"Damn." The human raises one eyebrow from under his sunglasses. "Wasn't sure if mermaids could even speak English, but you're out here like—"

You cut him off. "Stop saying _mermaid_. It's offensive as shit."

"Alright." He shrugs. "What is it, then? You know, your species."

"Mers. Not mermaids."

"Okay, so..." He gestures vaguely at you. "What happened? I mean, you were a fish, now you're a person, it's like some kind of shitty knockoff Splatoon, what's going on there?"

"I don't know. Fuck, I don't even know how I got here. Last thing I remember I'm in the gogdamn ocean like I'm supposed to be, then I wake up on land as a fucking _human_ for _no fucking reason_. I don't even know how it happened." You try to remember anything from between "ripping out your scales" and "waking up on land" and come up short. Great job, Karkat. You are officially the most useless piece of shit on the planet.

"Well, uh, you were on the beach, kinda passed out, then there was this magical flashy light thing and your tail turned into legs and then I brought you here. If that helps at all."

Okay. That answers some questions, but not everything. You're pretty sure the human isn't planning to hurt you, but you still don't know how you transformed and you don't know if you'll ever be able to turn back. You can't go back to Alternia anyway, your mutant ass would get culled the second that someone saw your disgusting red scales, so does it even matter?

"Are you okay?"

"Fucking fine," you snap. You are _not_ going to cry and get your red mutant tears everywhere. Fuck that.

The human either doesn't notice your clusterfuck emotional breakdown or is politely ignoring it. "So do you guys eat fish or is that like mer-cannibalism or something?"

"No, it's not fucking cannibalism, of course we eat fish. What the fuck kind of food do you think even exists in the ocean?"

He shrugs. "Well, I'm like ninety percent sure we have some dinosaur shaped fish sticks, it's ironic as fuck let's go."

He reaches out a hand and you take it hesitantly, struggling to walk on your stupid legs as he leads you out of his block and into the rest of the hive. How the fuck do humans do this all the time? This is so fucking stupid. This is how you're going to have to live, possibly for the entire rest of your pathetic life.

At least you're not dead yet.

So. Yeah.

It's been about twelve hours since this whole shitshow started and now you're sitting in the kitchen with the mermaid—the _mer_ —eating shitty ironic dinosaur-shaped fish sticks.

He's also still not wearing pants. Not that it matters that much, since the t-shirt he's wearing is more like a dress, like gogdamn this guy is like five feet tall, but yeah you're going to need to sort that out soon.

At least he's eating the fish sticks, though. It took a solid twenty minutes to convince him that they were 1) fish and 2) not poison. Which is understandable, considering the soggy off-brand sticks sitting on the plate in front of you are pretty much nothing like raw ocean fish.

"My name's Dave, by the way. You guys have names, right?"

He stares at you like you're a massive fucking idiot. "Of course we have names, why the fuck wouldn't we? What kind of ass backward society do you think we live in? My name's Karkat."

"That's weird."

"Fuck you, no it's not."

"How old are you, anyway?"

"Eight."

You almost choke on your apple juice. "I'm sorry _what_. You're telling me you're eight years old?"

Karkat looks confused. "Eight sweeps. What the fuck are years?"

"What the fuck are sweeps?"

"Twenty-seven lunar cycles." He says this like it's it's basic information and you're a fucking moron for not knowing it. To be fair, you are a fucking moron, just not for that particular reason.

"Damn dude, are you seriously making me do math here?" You try to calculate the numbers in your head. "Pretty sure that's like sixteen or seventeen years? I dunno. I'm seventeen."

"That's a dumb way to measure time."

"Yeah, well, I didn't make it up."

You sit there for a while, eating your fish sticks until you decide to break the silence. "So, uh, what happens now? Are you going back to the ocean or something?"

"I fucking can't."

"What do you mean?"

"I _mean_ , I can't just transform back into a mer whenever I feel like it. I'm stuck here, like this, possibly forever, and I have no fucking idea what I'm going to do. I don't have anywhere to go. I don't know how to be a fucking human."

"You can stay here." The words come out before you even think them through, but it's not a bad idea. "Hang out here until you can go back to the ocean. Be Karkat the totally non-fish human dude. It'll be great."

He sighs. "I'm going to fucking regret this, but fine."

"Epic. Okay, so step one, I'm gonna teach you about pants."

"What the _fuck_ is pants."

You have the feeling that this is the beginning of an interesting friendship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah yes dave teaching karkat to be a normal human there's definitely nothing that could go wrong there


	3. what do i say

\-- turntechGodhead  [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT]  at 12:17 --

TG: hey so youre into cryptids and mythical creatures and that kinda shit right  
TT: I am, in fact, into "that kinda shit".  
TT: Though I am fairly certain you already knew that, which leads me to doubt that this is a serious inquiry into my interests and instead speculate that it is more likely the preface to some sort of tangentially related YouTube video or rap song that I will no doubt regret listening to.  
TT: Either way, you have my attention.  
TG: damn why you gotta psychoanalyze everything i say  
TG: yknow maybe i just wanted to chat about cthulhtlhcultu but youre out here making accusations before i even start talking  
TG: a guy sends one link to the cotton eye joe gregorian chant nightcore dubstep remix and suddenly he cant be trusted ever again huh  
TG: thats pretty heartless if you ask me  
TG: what was i even talking about  
TG: oh yeah  
TG: are you interested in mermaids at all  
TT: I generally prefer the types of creatures found more often in psychological horror than children's movies; that said, I'm not particularly opposed to the concept.  
TG: well guess what  
TG: breaking news  
TG: mermaids are real  
TT: Interesting.  
TT: May I ask how you came to that conclusion?  
TG: oh wait shit i forgot theyre not called mermaids theyre mers  
TG: apparently thats pretty important  
TG: but its all good now  
TG: weve got a nice interspecies diplomacy going on here powered by walmart brand fish sticks the abstract concept of pants and hold up is he watching high school musical  
TG: not the kinda thing id expect would ever be blasting unironically out of my laptop but hey thats only like half a notch up on the unexpected shit scale  
TG: and the unexpected shit scale is through the fucking roof already  
TG: weather forecasters had no fucking idea this was coming it was that unexpected  
TG: there was not even the slightest amount of shit on their weird colored weather maps  
TG: but here we are in a massive thunderstorm of what the fuck is happening and disney channel is just another puddle in the raging flood of weird shit thats suddenly appeared in my life  
TT: ...  
TT: There's a lot to unpack here.  
TT: But I'll start with the obvious. I assume "he" is referring to a mer, with whom you are communicating and apparently watching High School Musical.  
TG: i mean im not watching it but yeah pretty much  
TG: his names karkat  
TT: How exactly did you come into contact with him?  
TT: I doubt a mythical species would remain undiscovered for long if they just revealed themselves to random humans whenever they felt like it.  
TG: ok first of all im not a random human  
TG: im dave fucking strider rap god and professional shitposter  
TG: random humans wish they were me  
TG: and anyway it was sort of an accident  
TG: he magically transformed into a human so i helped him out and now hes just kinda staying here until we figure out what the fucks going on  
TT: Interesting.  
TG: ok brb my phones almost dead  
TG: gotta find the charger before it fucking perishes like hewwo obama  
TG: if i dont make it tell snoop dogg i love him

\--turntechGodhead  [TG] is offline--

The phone dies in your hand right after you send your dramatic last words to Rose. Karkat's still staring intently at the movie like the shitty musical numbers are going to somehow reveal the meaning of life, so you think he'll be fine on his own for a few minutes. "I'll be right back," you say. Karkat nods without looking away from the screen.

You arrive in the kitchen (this house actually has a normal kitchen, not a deathtrap full of shitty swords, which is still absolutely fucking surreal) on your epic quest of Where The Fuck Did You Leave Your Charger This Time. Dirk's sitting at the table, messing with some of his robots. "Sup."

"Who's your new friend?"

 _Fuck_. "You mean Karkat?" Of course Dirk was going to find out eventually, you live in the same gogdamn house. You really should have come up with some kind of cover story by now. One that sounds more realistic than _yeah this dude's actually part fish he just kinda Little Mermaided himself into a human and we really don't know what we're doing right now_. "We're friends. Best bros. Spicy comrades. An everlasting bond forged through fire and Club Penguin. And he needed somewhere to stay, so, yeah. Here we are."

Dirk still looks kind of skeptical, unfazed by your absolute shitshow of an explanation. "There's nowhere else he could go?" You can feel him staring at you even though both of you are wearing shades. "We can't risk this for some random kid, Dave."

Shit. Shit. Fuck. You take a deep breath. You don't want to lie to him, but you can't risk Karkat getting kicked out. "...He's like us."

Dirk's expression softens almost imperceptibly at that, and you know without asking that you're both remembering the same things. Things you'd both rather forget. "Is there anyone looking for him?"

"No." That part's true, at least. Unless there are like, mer-police after his ass for betraying the fish dude code of secrecy. You doubt it, but you guess you should ask.

Dirk finally nods, and you breathe a huge sigh of relief. "He can stay here as long as neither of you manage to get the cops called on yourselves. I'm not letting you go back there."

"I know." You grab your charger and go back to your room.

You're not completely sure how you feel about human movies.

The romance is alright, but it's infuriatingly basic. There's so many characters and so much potential but the whole movie is entirely focused on just one relationship. They're not even flipping quadrants. You don't know if all human movies are like this, or if this one is just some kind of basic introduction to matespritship for dumbass human wrigglers or something, but it's ridiculous how much relationship potential they're completely wasting. And you're also pretty fucking sure that humans don't just randomly burst into song. Actually, fuck this. This whole movie is pathetic and unrealistic.

The lack of culling is pretty nice, though.

"Hey dude." Dave nods at you as he walks into the block, fidgeting with his human palmhusk. "So, uh, Dirk asked about you."

Dirk. Right. That's the adult who lives here. Apparently humans don't have lusii and adults raise the wrigglers instead, which is objectively weird as fuck and slightly terrifying. "What did you tell him?"

"Well, I'm not gonna tell him that you're actually a magic fish dude, so I said you're human. I mean, obviously I didn't say you're human, that would be suspicious as fuck, that would be like me saying 'hey guys you want some apple juice it's guaranteed 0% piss' and everyone would be like 'Dave what the fuck why did you piss in the juice' and I'd be like 'what no I didn't I just said it's 100% piss-free' but no one's even gonna _think_ about drinking the juice because—"

"Dave."

"Okay so long story short, you're a totally normal human and you're staying here because you ran away from home, because, you know." He shrugs. "It sucked. So just act normal, don't blow it in front of Dirk and everything's cool."

 _Ran away from home because it sucked._ You can do that. You press play on the movie again, and you know what, this is a piece of shit. There's a perfectly good kismesissitude opportunity right there, but no one is doing shit about it, and at this rate any more possible relationships are either going to end up completely ignored or shittily shoved in at the end, and you're not sure which is worse.

You click out of the movie and another window pops up. Bright yellow letters flash at the top of the screen. _Pesterchum_. You feel like you've heard of that before, but you're not entirely sure where you—

 _Oh_. Hopy shit. Hopy fucking shit. It's fucking human Trollian. It's the thing Aradia has on her human palmhusk _hopy fuck you can talk to Aradia_. You can _actually talk to one of your friends_. You grab the husktop and pray to whatever kind of shitty gog is out there that this works.

\--turntechGodhead  [TG]  began pestering apocalypseArisen  [AA]  at 13:29--

TG: ARADIA?  
TG: FUCK, I HOPE THIS WORKS.  
TG: GOGDAMN WHY IS THIS BRIGHT FUCKING RED?  
TG: THERE WE GO.  
TG: THIS IS KARKAT, BY THE WAY.  
TG: IN CASE ANYONE'S BEEN WONDERING WHERE THE HELL I'VE BEEN, WELL.  
TG: I'M HUMAN NOW.  
TG: SOMEHOW.  
TG: SO THAT'S A THING.  
TG: FUCK, ARE THESE MESSAGES EVEN GETTING TO YOU?

\--apocalypseArisen  [AA] is online--

AA: y0ure human?  
TG: YES.  
TG: AND BEFORE YOU ASK, I HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE HOW.  
TG: I DIDN'T DO THE RITUAL OR ANYTHING.  
AA: it sh0uldnt be p0ssible with0ut the ritual  
TG: I KNOW.  
TG: CLEARLY, THE UNIVERSE DOES NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THAT.  
AA: jegu2 fuck kk.  
AA: only you could po22iibly manage two fuck up that bad.  
AA: how the fuck diid you even do that.  
TG: WOW, THANKS.  
TG: FOR ALL YOU KNOW, I COULD HAVE BEEN DEAD.  
TG: GLAD TO SEE YOU WERE INCREDIBLY CONCERNED ABOUT MY POSSIBLE DEMISE.  
AA: iif you were dead ii would have already heard you, diip2hiit.  
TG: FUCK. THE VOICES. SORRY.  
AA: even wiithout the voiice2 you would stiill be biitching at me from the afterliife.  
AA: that2 ju2t the kiind of person you are.  
AA: not even death can 2top you from beiing an a22hole.  
TG: GO FUCK YOURSELF.  
AA: anyway  
AA: im g0ing t0 see if i can find anything 0ut  
AA: ab0ut h0w y0u transf0rmed  
AA: meet me at the r0ck t0wer at midnight


End file.
